HEAVEN OUR HOME. "And they had read together a book called 'Heaven our Home,' which had interested him very much."-From "Last Hours of Prince Albert." HEAVEN Our Home ! A citizen he hath grown Of that great and unseen world— Heaven our Home! Then say why should we moan? Heaven our Home! With God on His glorious throne; And the Lamb for sinners slain, Christ Jesu! our Lord and King, Saviour born to bear our pain, Heaven our Home! A temple with a shining dome, And the swelling anthems ring; Heaven our Home! A glorious city mighty grown- Of those who've won the fight. Heaven our Home! Those we love around the throne; Those gone before in Jesu's train, The perfect spirits of the just, Purged from their scarlet stain, Wash'd of their sinful rust. Heaven our Home! And is this glory our own? We that are so deep in sin, Are we to call the Lord of Light Father! Saviour! King! And see Him radiant and bright? Heaven our Home! With Christ the Corner Stone. Life's cares and struggles past, In His image we shall rest; All our burdens on Him cast, Resting ever on His breast. Heaven our Home! Yes, noble wife, thou'rt not alone; For he hath trod the sparkling shore; He hath stood at Jesu's shrine, With pride the golden lyre bore, Yet through all he still is thine. Heaven our Home! And unto him is surely known Thy weary weight of care and thought. On quiet wing, when thou dost sleep, He watcheth.-Hast thou not caught A whisper of his spirit-voice so deep? Heaven our Home! Mourner, then thou art not lone, When he touches some hidden string, Awakes a note thou loved well; Or strikes, with his passing wing, A chord from out some ancient spell. Heaven our Home! Not only o'er thy earthly throne Thy crown and robe are ready see! THROUGH THE FURNACE. Book the First. MARTHA'S STORY. CHAPTER I. WHEN WE WERE CHILDREN. COME back out of the shadows, dear memories of my childhood. Mild faces of the loved and lost, smile upon me once more across the mist of years; look at me, loving eyes, shining like pale stars in a dim evening sky; softly, sadly radiant, tender as the colour of violets seen faintly through morning dew. What is the first thing I can remember? An old white house, with many chambers, a dear old rambling, tumble-down mansion, lying in the heart of a grassy little valley far away in Cornwall. There are people who associate the name of Cornwall with nothing but rocky ruggedness and incomprehensible miners; but in this valley the roses and myrtle and honeysuckles climb up to the queer old chimneystacks, and the outhouses and stables are so nearly bowers of roses. The old white house belongs to my grandmamma, and I am living there with my sister Sophy-my pretty little sister I very often hear her called, and I begin to understand that there is some difference between us, for my grandmamma's visitors are always taking Sophy on their knees, and talking about her beautiful hair and eyes; while, as far as I am concerned, I should be just as well without any hair and eyes, for all the notice any one takes of them. But though I begin dimly to comprehend that my younger sister wins for herself praises and caresses that I never receive, I am exquisitely happy notwithstanding. Who could be otherwise than happy in a paradise where apple pasties and clotted cream are to be had all day long, and where I am free to roam about in gardens and orchards, where the plums are bigger and riper, and the apples rosier and sweeter, than any fruit I have ever tasted since? Sometimes I am tired of the gardens, where I have little plots of my own, and stick cut roses and fuchsias into the mould, and wonder why they don't immediately take root and flourish; for ah, what a little cockney I am! and what a new thing this world of trees and flowers appears to me as yet. Yes, there are times when I am tired of the gardens, as I suppose it is the weakness of our earthly nature to grow weary of everything, and then I play in a courtyard where there is a cat without a tail-to my mind a highly privileged animal, distinguished from all other cats by that physical peculiarity, and a dear old blind dog called Toby, who lies flat upon his side basking in the sunshine, midway between the kitchen and the dairy, and who is always ready to accept anything nice to eat. Sometimes I sit upon the ground by his side, and we partake of newly baked biscuits in alternate mouthfuls. I suppose there were dull skies and rainy weather sometimes in that western valley, but looking back I see only cloudless blue heavens, and the summer sunlight shining on the sloping meadow-lands and tiny wandering streams. There is a trout-stream that crawls in and out of a little woody nook of the gardens, and then loses itself in an orchard; and, having heard vague talk of fish to be caught in those sluggish waters, I sometimes sit upon a rustic wooden bridge, and do a little angling with a line of packthread and a crooked pin. I believe I have dim views as to the capture of cod and salmon, such as I have seen on cool slopes of slate at a London fishmonger's, for I am such a cockney child, and all this out-of-door paradise, where the cawing rooks and the cooing pigeons make music all day long, is still so very new to me. I look down at my black How do I come to be in Cornwall? frock and find the answer to that question. is grandmamma's house, and I live here. I can recollect a long, long journey in a coach, a night arrival at a noble old inn at Exeter, two tired children awakened in the early sunlight of a summer morning, and then another long, long journey, during which the tired children are always asking, "When shall we be there ?" and, pointing to every desirable habitation in the landscape, demand eagerly whether that is grandmamma's house, until depression of spirit comes upon them by reason of reiterated negatives, and they sink into discontented slumbers, from which they awake by-and-bye to find themselves nestling in the laps of aunts in a delightful parlour, and the jolting coach vanished away. Am I sorry for papa? No; I don't think I quite know what that word sorrow means; and then papa is little more than a shadow with black whiskers, though I have some faint notion of myself seated on his knee and called a good little maid; but that seems half a century ago, though my black frocks are scarcely shabby yet. And I have the same faint notion of a house in London, where the rooms are dark, and, as I think, rather dirty, where there is a shabby, faded look about everything, which makes the brightness here seem so much brighter by contrast, and where I hear my nurse complain of the misery of living in lodgings. It is so long since I lost sight of a pale, wan shadow lying on a big four-post bed in a great gloomy house, that it is only by hearsay that I know it is the shadow of my mother. I don't even know where the house was; but sometimes when chance has taken me, on a dull summer evening, into some of the dreariest streets at the back of Manchester Square, I have been impressed with the notion of having known the neighbourhood in some previous state of existence. But of course these are later fancies, which have nothing to do with me now, while I am still a little child living in my grandmamma's house. No, I am not sorry for papa, but I think I have an inquiring mind, for I find myself listening to my aunts when they talk about him, and I notice that they shake their heads and look very grave when they mention his name. One day I hear a male visitor say that my papa was a SCAMP; I have not the least idea what the word means, but I guess at once that it is not right to be a scamp. My aunts! how much can I remember about them in these early days? Above all, I can remember that they are kind, that they have tender, caressing hands, gentle voices, inexhaustible compassion for childish misfortunes in the way of bruised knees and grazed elbows-and, oh dear! how many sharp angles perpetually exposed to vicissitude one seems to have in childhood! First there is my aunt Matilda, who paints flowers on rice-paper, and embroiders wonderful chair-covers in Berlin wools and shining silks: I have only to close my eyes, and I can see her sitting in the pretty bowwindowed parlour, with her soft white hands moving about among the rainbow-coloured silks and worsteds that lie loosely scattered on a big embroidery frame. And then there is my aunt Penelope, who is of a more domestic turn of mind, and whose footsteps are always accompanied by a musical jingling of keys, and whom I associate with the mysterious delights of a delicious chamber, in which there are rows of jam pots stretching up to the very ceiling, and lemons hanging in nets, boxes of figs and chests of oranges, an actual loaf of sugar and a pair of real scales, like those in a real grocer's shop, with which it would be such enchantment to play. The scent of the myrtles blows in at an open window as I sit upon a wooden dresser watching my aunt Penelope make pound-cakes with her own pretty hands, from which she has drawn the rings that lie in a little heap of splendour that glitters in the sunlight. I ask her if I shall have rings like those when I grow up. I have an idea that the perfection of grown-up life must be such a life as my aunt leads ; and foolish as many of our childish fancies are, I do not know but that this may have been rather a sensible one. Then, after my aunts, there is my grandmamma; the benefactress who has taken her dead son's children under the shelter of this dear old roof; my grandmamma, to whom, the servant who takes |